


My Skin Is Very Young, But My Heart Is Very Old

by orphan_account



Category: 9-1-1 (TV)
Genre: Death, F/M, Gen, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Overdose, Suicide, Suicide Attempt, Therapy, discussion of abuse, discussion of suicide, past trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-27
Updated: 2020-04-28
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:39:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21587746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Buck hasn't been himself lately, his eyes lost somewhere, and his fingers tracing along his neck.
Relationships: Evan "Buck" Buckley & Eddie Diaz, Evan "Buck" Buckley & Maddie Buckley, Evan "Buck" Buckley/Eddie Diaz, Maddie Buckley/Howie "Chimney" Han
Comments: 48
Kudos: 726





	1. Chapter 1

_“9-1-1, what’s your emergency?”_

Buck stares at the body of the boy with a blank and unreadable expression. They’re standing on the back deck of a moderately nice house. Middle class. White. Normal. Average. The boy is seventeen and skinny. His body is bundled up in a large jacket, heavier than normal. Something for winter, something you wouldn’t wear here in the hot sun of LA. It’s more like something you’d were in Pennsylvania. Where the winters sometimes result in fat droplets of snow that melt almost immediately on impact. That’s where you’d where this jacket, not here, not in the city of Angels.

“Buck?” Bobby asks gently, but Buck isn’t listening. He’s stuck staring at the boy sitting in the pink chair. His hands fallen to his sides, eyes looking up to the sky where stars surely were when he took his last breath. The cup beside him is in a thermos, but something tells Buck that it wasn’t anything hot he was drinking. Not when the condensation has built around the edges. It was a cold drink. It had ice, and probably something else to numb him. To break him. To split him apart and be able to take the drugs. The poison.

“He’s gone.” Hen says softly, her eyes looking to Chimney’s as Bobby nods to them. His eyes then returning to Buck’s in concern. Eddie who is nearby looks at Buck curiously and with his own concern. He sees something haunted there, something shocking, and he gets it. He knows it. He feels it.

“Can I- I’ll ride with him.” Buck says before any of them can ask.

“Are you sure?” Bobby asks, but it’s not what he really wants to know.

Buck nods his head. “Yeah.”

~

Buck touches the hollow of his throat with gentle fingers. He traces along it as though he expects something to be there. His other hand in his lap. His legs bundled together on the couch of the firehouse as though he is trying to make himself smaller. Eddie watches him, eyebrows drawn down into confusion as Hen and Chimney have a heated discussion behind them about oatmeal cookies with either raisins or chocolate chips. Pretty soon Eddie or Buck is going to have to step in. Usually it would be Buck. He’d be right in the thick of it, insisting that his opinion is superior. His cockiness showing. Eddie always found that endearing rather than annoying.

“You good?” Eddie asks and cringes almost immediately. ‘You good?’ What the hell?

“Yeah.” Buck says giving him a nod and the hint of a smile. His hand that was at his throat moving back down into his lap with his other. He looks to the TV and rests his head on the armrest. His eyes lowered but not shut. Lost. Eddie watches, concerned lines drawn into his eyes and rapid frown.

~

“It wasn’t an accident.” Buck says, his eyes lost somewhere outside the passenger window. He watches the trees fly by. There are other things, buildings and people, but he’s looking at the trees, at the sky, at the clouds. He doesn’t look to Eddie, he doesn’t even sound like he has an opinion or an emotion in his voice. He’s been like this for the past couple of days. It’s worrying everyone, and Eddie couldn’t take it anymore. He asked him over for dinner with Christopher, usually they’d do this on Friday’s but today is Wednesday and Buck is lost. He’s not himself. Eddie doesn’t want to lose him in whatever it is he’s stuck in. Buck couldn’t say no. He could say no to Eddie, but never to Christopher.

“What was?” Eddie asks, one hand now off the driving wheel as he reaches for the radio and turns it down to almost non-existent levels.

“That kid he- it wasn’t an accident.” Buck repeats, eyes no longer on the trees, but not on Eddie either. His whole body still pointing to the outside, almost like he wants to leap out and that thought alone startles Eddie. Makes him want to reach out and bring Buck close. Close enough so that he can’t do anything rash, but why would he?

“The overdose.” Eddie repeats, eyes still on the road but peeking over to Buck whenever he can. “You kept tabs on it.”

“Him.” Buck corrects, and there’s a slight lingering anger there that makes Eddie apologize almost immediately.

“Sorry. Him. Right.”

“Sorry.” Buck says. “I just- He was only seventeen.”

“He was too young.” Eddie agrees, his heart hammering in his chest, suddenly afraid, and nervous.

“I talked to Athena and she said he left a note.”

“Athena?” Eddie asks confused. Why is she involved?

“Yeah.” Buck confirms, but he doesn’t clarify why he brings any of this up, or why Athena would be involved. Why the police would have something to do with a suicide. Instead he stays silent, not uttering one single more word all the way back. It’s an eerie silence, a silence that never exists with Buck. It makes Eddie’s heart constrict ever the more.

“Hey, Buck?” Eddie asks before Buck can open the door and get out.

“Yeah, Eddie?” Buck asks his eyes finally on him.

“You know you can talk to me, right? About anything.”

Buck’s eyes are confused, then sad, and finally grateful. He smiles. “Yeah, I know. Thanks.”

Eddie nods and they head inside.

~

“Well, I wasn’t expecting you here.” Frank says with a kind smile as Buck rubs his hands together nervously. He sits on the couch with a nervous tic, his leg bouncing up and down as he looks around. He’s been here before. He knows the routine. He knows how this usually goes, but this time nothing’s happened. He wasn’t injured or in some sort of secondary trauma. He wasn’t made to come here. This time he asked to be here.

Buck smiles wryly. “Why? Because last time I stormed out?”

Frank nods. “You can’t really blame me, can you?”

Buck nods, his smile leaving his face, and only a pained expression is left.

“My door is always open.” Frank tells him sincerely. “And if you’re not ready to talk about what it is you need to talk about today, then there’s always tomorrow. There’s always time.”

“For that kid there wasn’t.”

“What kid?”

Buck looks down, and before he can stop himself he starts tearing up. “He was only seventeen and he killed himself.”

Frank nods. “Okay, tell me what happened.”

Buck shakes his head as Frank holds out a tissue box for him. Buck shakes his head against the offer and instead sits back, bunching up his sweatshirt sleeve to wipe at his face. His hand lingering on his neck, tracing along it as though it were a comforting gesture. “He didn’t get the chance to see how good it can be.” Buck continues, fingers still tracing along.

Understanding enters Frank’s eyes. “Unlike you. He didn’t get the chance like you did.”

Buck stills, eyes looking up to Frank’s. “Yeah. Yeah, like me.”

“I’m glad you came here today, Buck.”

“You’re not going to put this in my file are you?”

“No. Not unless it will put others or yourself in danger.” Frank repeats like he did the first time they met and he had to explain to Buck the terms of confidentiality.

Buck nods. “Okay. Okay, then. I want to talk about it.”

“We can start wherever you want to.”

It takes Buck a few moments to compose himself before he begins with, “I was seventeen, too.”


	2. My Bones Decide My Home

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sort of a follow up of 1, please take head of the tags/warnings before reading.

“Your fingers turned purple and blue.” Maddie says, her voice soft and comforting despite the distress going over what happened causes her. Buck listens intently, his eyes on the table where his fingers dance, moving around in motions almost to emphasize how normal they are. How there is no purple or blue hues making their way onto his flesh. He touches them against the others, almost in awe as he tries to picture the words Maddie is speaking. He wants the picture in front of him, to watch it like a video tape, but he can’t. All he can do is put her words on a paintbrush and make a mural of the event in his mind’s eye. It’s the only way he can see it and know it, truly.

“What happened next?” Buck asks, eyes on Maddie’s.

Maddie picks up her wine and takes a large gulp, her body language conveying how uncomfortable and upsetting this makes her. Buck feels the discomfort and sorrow deep within him at what he put her through and what he still puts her through, but he has to know. He has to. He needs to know everything that happened because he wasn’t there, not really. He wants to know what happened. He wants to remember. He feels almost left out, and in some ways violated, like someone did something to him without his permission. Touched him, moved him, and took something from him Buck never wanted to give up. He feels his skin crawl and he can’t push it away anymore. He has for so long and he can’t do it anymore. He needs to embrace it. He needs to know it.

“I got the scarf off your neck.” Maddie says carefully, her words unsteady as though she’s going to be sick, but she has a strong stomach. She’s stronger than even him. She continues. “I called 9-1-1 and I did CPR until the paramedics arrived.”

Buck nods, hands wrapping around his own cup, but it’s not wine or any other alcohol. It’s simply a coffee. He picked two up on the way over here, one for him and one for Maddie. He knows her order just as she knows his, but when Buck told her why he was here. Why he was visiting without Chimney around, it became clear that coffee wouldn’t be enough for her. She pushed hers away and went to the wine cabinet she got last year for Christmas. She poured a large glass and sat down. Her first words were, ‘Are you sure?’ And, ‘Why do you want to know?’

“And I went to the hospital?” Buck prompts, Maddie’s words stilling and stalling. Her eyes are lost somewhere but eventually she looks up and nods, her lips going to her cup and finishing it in one go. She goes to get up and get another but Buck is already beating her to it. He rises up and walks over, getting the bottle and bringing it over. He wisely leaves it on the table, Maddie’s grateful smile says it all.

“Did I- Did my heart stop?” Buck asks, eyes ashamed but with curiosity shining brightly in them all at once.

Maddie looks to him and there is no joy of any kind in her gaze as she says quietly, “You’re pressure dropped. It was so low, but I- I knew that you were going to be okay.”

Buck’s eyes grow confused. “How?”

“You sort of opened your eyes and looked up at me.” Maddie’s lips turn into a small smile now as she remembers the relief she felt at that one simple act, that one simple movement of Buck’s. “I knew that you were going to be okay.”

Buck looks down. “I don’t remember that.”

Maddie nods, acknowledging his words but doesn’t say anything more. If it were up to her she wouldn’t say anything at all.

“When I woke up for the first time, that I remember, I was alone.”

It’s Maddie’s turn now to look confused. “I was always with you. Or Jack was.”

Buck shrugs. “I woke up and a nurse came in, and she looked so confused.” Buck chuckles now at the memory, unable not to. “She said that my family was out getting dinner and that they’d be back soon. I stared at the clock and waited for almost an hour, maybe two, but eventually I couldn’t take it anymore and I fell asleep again.”

Buck laughs, his head shaking as Maddie looks at him horrified. “I’m so sorry, Buck.”

She reaches out for his hand, taking it in hers.

“It’s okay.” Buck says quickly, because it is.

“I should have been there, and why are you laughing?”

Buck’s smile is wide as he says, “That poor nurse, so confused and scared. She backed away like she’d been burnt when she saw me awake.”

Maddie shakes her head as Buck’s shoulders heave in laughter that soon turns to something else. Tears brim, and Buck’s not sure if it’s from the laughter at the situation or sorrow. In the end it doesn’t matter because Maddie is still holding his hand and she’s not going anywhere. None of his family is. She’s also smiling, finding some humour in the situation, which is good because she deserves to be happy. To not have the storm clouds of her life hang over her head anymore. She’s had far too many.

“I brought Chinese!” Chimney says with a happy tone as he opens his and Maddie’s apartment door, walking in with joyful steps. As soon as he’s around the corner in the kitchen, seeing the both of them, holding hands and smiling with a mixture of sadness, he pauses. “Buck, I didn’t know you were going to be here. I would have brought you something.”

Buck shakes his head, letting go of Maddie’s hand and getting up. “It’s okay, I should go.”

“Are you sure?” Maddie asks, confused and concerned as she stands with him.

Buck gives her a reassuring grin. “Yeah. I’m going over to Eddie’s for a late dinner actually. We’re making homemade tacos with Christopher.”

Maddie smiles at that, a knowing glint in her eyes as well as Chimney’s as she says, “Have fun, and if you need me, call me.”

“I will.” Buck promises, and unlike when he was seventeen, this time he means it. “See you tomorrow.”


	3. Because All I Am Is All That I've Been Through

“Mom?” Buck asks in surprise as the voice on the other end hesitates to answer at first. The ‘Hello’ being enough apparently. It is enough. Buck knows who it is. It’s his mom, his mom who loves him so much that it hurts. That bones break when she puts her arms around him. His mom.

Buck grips the phone tightly as he stands in the middle of his apartment. So open and loud, airy, too much space in-between everything. He wants to curl up in a closet or under his covers. He wants the walls to encase him and enclose into him. Squeezing him with a pressure that’s calming and a pain that cuts through the nothingness, the numbness he has to shell himself with to survive. This is what his mom does to him.

“What’s wrong?” He asks, because she shouldn’t be calling. She just shouldn’t. He hates how his voice quivers, how his hands shake, and how he has to reach out and grip the table nearby as tears come. Tears he’s always been able to hold back when he was younger, not understanding or allowing himself to shed them properly until he got away. Until he came here. This is safety. Home. Family. The true meaning of each word. She can’t be calling.

“Sweetie, I just wanted to check in on you. It’s April. I wanted to make sure everything was going well with you. Maybe you’ve started dating someone new?” Her voice is kind. Warm, and his mom. He can’t help but love her. He can’t help but want her to wrap her arms around him and bring him home. It’s so hard to love someone you hate. To hate to love.

“I’m- I’m fine, mom.” He tells her even though he just watched someone die. Help plan a funeral, and give a man he barely knew a week an honouring end. A man who he connected with in a way he hasn’t connected with anyone in so long. A man whose stories and life was so much like his own that it hurt. It hurt because it was like he was looking in a mirror. In a future he never wanted nor felt like he chose.

When he was younger he often dreamed of a family of his own. A family that was happy, accepting, and never degrading. Never words thrown and manipulated into skin like a tattoo with an infected needle. A family that loved, not hated, and that was honest. That was simple. Happy smiles and Sunday brunches. He wanted it so badly he often wept at night thinking about it. Cold nights alone. Those nights grew more frequent when Maddie left him, left him alone with them. Always being left behind.

“April.” He tastes the word on his lips, his head nodding as he remembers why April. As he remembers the scarf. The hospital. The everything.

“Yes, sweetie, April.” She repeats and for a moment it’s wonderful. He feels his heart warm at her concern, at her forgiving tone. Her seemingly happy mind to put everything in the past. Everything put away, but it never lasts long. Not ever. “How about you come back home for a visit? Or we could come there to you? Your father’s health isn’t so great, not that you’ve called to check but we could make it work.”

His mother, here, with his family. With his love. Within his safety. It’s almost too horrible a thought to contemplate. He grips the table with his hand and closes his eyes, he tries to push all the buried anger and resentments away, but it’s so damn hard. He wants to yell, to snarl like a feral dog. He wants her to hurt like he’s hurting. Is that so wrong? Is he such a terrible person to want that? Maybe she is right, maybe he’s the one who causes all the pain. Maybe he’s wrong. He does always make it about himself. He does all these things. Maybe he’s the problem in all of this.

“I- I can’t.” He tells her. “I’m sorry.”

Because he is. He can’t do this, and maybe that’s selfish but he knows that he can only be happy if he doesn’t see her. The good doesn’t outweigh the bad that it brings. It just doesn’t.

“Well, fine then.” She huffs almost, but there’s still a sweet tone there. An all knowing essence about her, the power and authority she still holds over him weighing each syllable. Then, “You always do this, Evan, maybe you need to look in the mirror because this is abuse.”

His hand almost falls. “What?” He’s truly shocked even though he shouldn’t be.

“You don’t talk to us for months, and then- and for what? Ignoring me like this just so I’ll- I don’t know what you want, but you need to stop doing this.”

“I- I didn’t- I’m not.” He’s stuttering his words, too shocked by the sudden appearance of ‘abuse’ and what she’s trying to imply, and then the thought of, ‘what if she’s right?’ And then the anger comes as the words branded in his mind come out like a rocket. He can’t contain himself.

He’s telling her without thought, only emotion, “You wouldn’t know what abuse is if it hit you in the face.”

She chuckles, and he can just picture it. Her condensing smile. Her surety that she is right, and the nagging feeling that she is in him coming back full force. He hates it. He’s hurting. It hurts. “I- I know I’m not perfect, but I- I would _never_ do something like that. I just- I’ve been busy, and we- we always argue.”

He says the last part uncertain, lost, and almost child-like. The tightening of the scarf feels like it’s happening right now, not just a memory. The certainty of it all being over and the relief it brought is there with him. Almost like years since it happened haven’t past.

“That’s not my fault.”

Buck hangs up before she can say anything more. His veins that were filled with anger and resentment at the beginning of the conversation are now filled with lead. He feels heavy, sad, and an exhausting anger now. An anger that holds no fist, only the broken angry whisper caught in a turbulent wind. He’s supposed to be going to work now. He’d rather curl up in bed, legs to his chest, and the darkness, his only friend that’s stuck by him, never leaving, surrounding him.

But he has a job to do, and helping people seems pretty damn good right now. 

He shuts off his phone and tries to forget the feeling of the tightening scarf around his neck.


End file.
